喇嘛, 僧伽, 그리고 淸 帝國 ― 淸代 티베트 사원의 승려인구 변화와 淸의 對 티베트 정책 ― = Lama, Sangha, and the Qing Empire — The changes of monastic populations in Qing times and Qing policies towards Tibet —

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

With its territorial expansion and population growth, the Qing dynasty was a remarkable era of the Chinese history for both its economic development and ethnic diversity. Mongols and Tibetans inhabiting northwestern and western parts of the Qing empire were a key to such a development, and Tibetan Buddhism, as a major religious and cultural underpinning for the people, became a matter of interest for the Qing dynasty. Accordingly, the Qing adminstration had devised an institutional apparatus, such as Lifanyuan (Board for the Administration of Outlying Regions), for their control. This paper analyzes a gap between the theoretical and assigned numbers of Tibetan monastics and their actual and bona fide existence in the Tibetan Buddhist world in order to understand the ways in which the Qing dynasty addressed the matters related to Tibetan Buddhism.
The religious population of Tibetan Buddhism comprised two major parts: reincarnate lamas (Tib. sprul sku) and sangha communities. According to the regulation of Lifanyuan, there was a designated quota of the reincarnate lamas during the Qing times. However, the quota does not match with the huge growth of numbers of reincarnate lamas, which can be verified by recent studies by scholars such as Gray Tuttle. This clearly tells the fact that the Qing dynasty did not have a control of the spread of the phenomenon of reincarnate lamas. The more general religious population of Tibetan Buddhism, the sangha communities, shows a similar pattern. The Qing times saw an exponential growth of monk populations of Tibetan Buddhism, which exceeded the growth speed of the general population of Qing. Nevertheless, the Qing administration developed a very limited institutional measures to deal with the phenomenon. It was obvious, however, that the Qing court had been well aware of these two populational developments.
In sum, it can be argued that Qing did not have ability nor intention of controling the population of Tibetan monatics such as reincarnate lamas and sangha communities. The Tibetan Buddhism world had its own initiatives and dynamics for its development during the Qing times.